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Entry tags:
Overcoming the Light
WHO: Himeka and Emet-Selch (And guest?!)
WHAT: Clarifying Ingame happenings
WHERE: The Wanderer Shrine
WHEN: Dated to 7/01
WARNINGS: Game Spoilers I guess?
After a concise message with a location and time, all he can do is arrive and see if she decides to join him there. Her attendance is certainly not assured.
It is not beyond him that someone could reasonably think of the invitation as a trap given what happened in Venera, or that the opposite could hold true and she would gather allies to use this to her advantage. (As uncharacteristic as that could seem...) Perhaps the information is something that would no longer be as freely given. Yet even with those very realistic possibilities, here he stands, waiting in the shadows just outside the Shrine watching as the minutes tick by.
"Come, my friend, you've stood there brooding for quite some time. Why not sit for a while?" A voice, haunting and strange, calls from somewhere nearby.
Emet-Selch glances behind him to where a large robed figure sits. Their featureless face is obscured by a white mask but there still seems to be something welcoming in the way that they beckon for Emet-Selch to sit at their side. This 'Shade' had kept him company in the days following Venera as he looked to reconcile his experiences. Where they had come from is a mystery, but their presence is welcome all the same.
He walks over and quietly seats himself at the Shade's behest. His head narrowly reaches the Shade's elbow as he sits.
"Good." The strange droning voice lilts up as if to indicate approval. "Now, rest. So that you may be better prepared for any new challenges which come your way."
Emet-Selch leans back against the tree behind him and he lets his eyes fall close. Perhaps he could afford a moments rest. Though he is not careless enough to do so without an intentional conjuring of shielding magic.
WHAT: Clarifying Ingame happenings
WHERE: The Wanderer Shrine
WHEN: Dated to 7/01
WARNINGS: Game Spoilers I guess?
After a concise message with a location and time, all he can do is arrive and see if she decides to join him there. Her attendance is certainly not assured.
It is not beyond him that someone could reasonably think of the invitation as a trap given what happened in Venera, or that the opposite could hold true and she would gather allies to use this to her advantage. (As uncharacteristic as that could seem...) Perhaps the information is something that would no longer be as freely given. Yet even with those very realistic possibilities, here he stands, waiting in the shadows just outside the Shrine watching as the minutes tick by.
"Come, my friend, you've stood there brooding for quite some time. Why not sit for a while?" A voice, haunting and strange, calls from somewhere nearby.
Emet-Selch glances behind him to where a large robed figure sits. Their featureless face is obscured by a white mask but there still seems to be something welcoming in the way that they beckon for Emet-Selch to sit at their side. This 'Shade' had kept him company in the days following Venera as he looked to reconcile his experiences. Where they had come from is a mystery, but their presence is welcome all the same.
He walks over and quietly seats himself at the Shade's behest. His head narrowly reaches the Shade's elbow as he sits.
"Good." The strange droning voice lilts up as if to indicate approval. "Now, rest. So that you may be better prepared for any new challenges which come your way."
Emet-Selch leans back against the tree behind him and he lets his eyes fall close. Perhaps he could afford a moments rest. Though he is not careless enough to do so without an intentional conjuring of shielding magic.
no subject
She shakes her head. There's no sharing in the perceived triumph.
"It was only necessary to defeat you...Hades."
no subject
Hythlodaeus turns his gaze to where his friend sits. He reaches out and softly places a hand on Emet-Selch's shoulder in quiet reassurance. It's a small gesture, but one that shows even a construct of his own making would recognize the significance of what was said.
What she said is such an innocuous thing. Short, simple, shocking at first given the use of his name, which gives it some sense of strange credibility. How could she know? Then the words sink deeper. The failure they imply. The loss they imply. The sacrifices, the sorrow, the people he would let down. That it would all be for nothing. It would mean that everything was for nothing.
That... he cannot accept.
Emet-Selch clenches his fists tightly in his lap. His voice, this time, sounds bitter and terse. "I can not be felled by the likes of you. You, but a mere glimmer of the former glory of our world. Weak, ignorant, short-sighted. An appalling disgrace in your fealty to suffering."
no subject
It's the truth...and that's what matters. No matter how ugly it is.
"Mayhaps."
She'll take the blows--he means them, she's sure, but she also knows they're wielded out of pain.
"But I did--...we did. Ardbert and I."
Because he deserves recognition. They are separate people with separate lives. Now he just continues with her.
"I saw you transform. Twice."
That is something that she knows only now is significant after her time in Elpis, but she refrains from mentioning that place at all. That would definitely be too much.
Finally, Himeka spares him a glance. She's far from gloating over her victory. Even at the time it had been tinged with a note of sadness. Not just because while she disagreed with his methods she understood Emet-Selch's reasons for what he did, but because she had genuinely believed he'd been a friend. At least once.
"I don't know why you don't remember. But Estinien remembers times that I don't, so..."
There must be some sort of...timeline inconsistency.
🙃 /stares distantly into the sun
His face falls into a grimace. Not one out of anger, but like the words had inflicted an unseeable pain.
It could be difficult to carry on with the weight of duty. Still, all he had to do was bide his time and wait for the inevitable hubris of man to be their own downfall. Bear the weight a little longer and the shards would be rejoined. It was a distant hope, but it was there. Now those shards are gone. That hope is gone. Now those chances are gone. And the weight grows heavier still.
Until finally, it becomes unbearable.
After so many thousands of years of carrying it, the weight of responsibility, sadness, and grief comes crashing down. Emet-Selch puts a hand to his chest as he can feel the Kenoma begin to writhe like a monster that he can no longer contain. He coughs faintly, and the inky black spills out of his mouth. And that monster feeds on the endless pit of sadness and hopelessness that have amassed over the years.
He takes a steadying breath. "I will not allow it to be for nothing." He hisses bitterly.
Somehow, flying in the face of gravity itself, Emet-Selch forces his way to his feet. Hythlodaeus reaches for him and he is dismissed with a flick of the wrist. The shade vanishes in a plume of black smoke. Even looking at a shade of his friend after being told such a thing is far too much. "Not that I believe your foolish notions, but what you say would only prove that I am on the right path." He wipes at the corner of his mouth with two fingers.
"It would mean that this is my last chance and I should not squander it." One last chance to make it all right again. "So I will not squander it. I will tear down the sky to get them back, and if the sky proves not enough then this world shall burn in its wake." Destroying the Pleroma is the objective and it would be reached no matter how.
Emet-Selch throws her a look. There is something different about this. Something hurt, desperate, and angry. His voice raises. "I will see to it that hope is choked from your hearts as you fall one by one by one."
this is fine 1/2
Is he--is he rejecting it? Is this--somehow--?
no subject
The right path...
It isn't the first speech or declaration against her that she's heard, but she'd hoped that they were beyond this. Himeka knew it would be hard--he'd taken it all so poorly initially back in Elpis--but he'd also overcome it. Yet it feels as if the final blow she had dealt in that facsimile of Amaurot was somehow kinder than telling him of it here.
"Emet-Selch..."
She begins slowly, standing slowly as well, doing everything she can to not make herself an immediate threat.
"You don't have to do this. We don't have to do this. Not again. Please."
no subject
Not something he commits to lightly. He learned of the detriments of the Kenoma in the Throne room: To further the Kenoma's power would stain their soul. Now it is the way forward - the only way forward, it seems.
His tone and expression turn dour. "I am no fool, I know what the Kenoma brings to those who bear its influence. It sullies the soul of its bearers in ways that I cannot foresee." Emet-Selch lifts a gloved palm so that he may look at it in consideration. His fingers ball slowly into a fist. No matter the cost, then. "If I must rend my soul asunder at the mercy of this thing for one final chance to save them, then that is what I must do."
so proud of her for breaking him with #spoilers
He doesn't have the clarity of his memories...for once, their positions are wholly reversed.
"The Regent wants to undo it all!" She finally tries a plea to logic. "That won't break your people back. We can't change the past--" Even her own foray into the past became cyclical, a necessary agent for the future. "--but you can choose to be part of the present!"
This is why you can't spoil entire expacs!! 😔
"I have tried to live side by side with those in your 'present' only to be met with disappointment." His face twists into disdain as he speaks with such palpable contempt. "Why should I sacrifice so many and so much for those who do not deserve my charity?"
Both his hands tighten into fists. "Make me your villain if you like, for even if it means unraveling this world at the Regent's behest, I cannot abandon them." All those precious souls who were so dear to him, unique in their color and luster, had been swallowed whole by what consumed their world. Save for one. The one that stood here with him in the shadow of this shrine. The most precious - and yet broken - thing to him in this world.
Emet-Selch pays her a longing look. One that silently pleads with her to understand. "I will bring them back. I will bring you back, no matter the cost."
So he turns and makes to leave her in peace. The next time they meet would not be so amicable.